This story originally ran in Them.
Protestors in Orlando, Florida are fighting back against the removal of a rainbow crosswalk honoring the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.
On Thursday, August 21, Orlando locals discovered that the state had painted over a memorial crosswalk, created to honor the victims of the fatal event, overnight. In response, a group of roughly 100 people began restoring its rainbow colors using chalk.
X content
“This cowardly abuse of power, carried out under the cover of night, is a dangerous escalation of DeSantis’s campaign to erase LGBTQ visibility and censor our history,” said Nadine Smith, Executive Director of Equality Florida, which held a peaceful protest at the site on Thursday. “We have endured decades of state-sanctioned discrimination. And, like every attack before it, this act is designed to spread fear, dispirit us, and push us back into the shadows. But just as we did in the hours after Pulse, our community will come together, look out for each other, and raise our flags higher. We refuse to be erased. We will not let hate win.”
On June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire on the gay bar during its Latinx night, killing 49 people and injuring at least 53 in one of the deadliest U.S. mass shootings in history. The rainbow crosswalk, which was installed outside the former Pulse building in 2017, had been part of Orlando’s Pulse Memorial.
The crosswalk’s removal follows a July 1 directive from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, ordering all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico to ensure that their roads featured “consistent” markings that were “free from distraction.” Duffy explicitly named rainbow crosswalks in a tweet announcing the directive, writing, “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”
“Political banners have no place on public roads,” he continued. “I’m reminding recipients of @USDOT roadway funding that it’s limited to features advancing safety, and nothing else.”
Back in June, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — who failed to mention LGBTQ+ or Latinx people in his 2025 Pulse memorial statement — signed a bill into law demanding that “non-standard surface markings, signage, and signals that do not directly contribute to traffic safety or control” within the state be removed “to ensure compliance with FDOT’s uniform system for traffic control devices.”
Florida Secretary of Transportation Jared W. Perdue praised Duffy for joining “Florida’s proactive efforts to ensure we keep our transportation facilities free & clear of political ideologies” in a July 2 X post.
Speaking to WESH 2, Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan called the Pulse Memorial crosswalk’s removal “ridiculous.”
“We did everything according to plan,” Sheehan said. “That’s why we weren’t even concerned, because we had done everything FDOT asked. We did it according to FDOT rules. They’ve actually made some of these crosswalks less safe.”
In an August 21 X post of his own, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said he was “devastated” to learn that the memorial’s rainbow crosswalk had been painted over.
“This callous action of hastily removing part of a memorial to what was at the time our nation’s largest mass shooting, without any supporting safety data or discussion, is a cruel political act,” Dyer wrote. “While this crosswalk has been removed, our community’s commitment to honoring the 49 can never be erased.”
X content
Florida Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith called the state’s removal of the crosswalk a “disgusting act of betrayal” in an X post, which included a video of Smith standing at the site.
“[FDOT] illegally vandalized city property without providing the city of Orlando notice or getting their approval to remove this rainbow crosswalk,” Smith said, adding that it was painted “not only to remember the lives of the 49 mostly LGBTQ people of color who were murdered here, but also to keep the pedestrians safe who have come here, year after year, to pay their respects… Of course, they did this in the middle of the night, because they knew what they were doing was wrong.”
DeSantis quote-tweeted a post resharing Smith’s video that same day, writing, “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”
Smith, who is also a senior advisor for Equality Florida, was part of the first-recoloring of the crosswalk on Thursday. "I was proud to join several others in recoloring the rainbow crosswalk at the Pulse nightclub memorial,” he told Them. “It was inspiring to see so many local residents spring into action in response to the Governor’s cowardly abuse of power. While this attack was meant to demoralize us and push us back in the closet, Orlando refused to be erased. We turned out, painted the neighborhood with even more rainbows, and reminded everyone that love always wins.”
After re-instating the crosswalk on Thursday afternoon, the chalk was erased by Friday morning. Florida House Rep Anna Eskamani was a part of coloring it a second time.
Instagram content
Orlando isn’t the only Florida city protesting the state’s crackdown on everyday Pride displays. The city of Delray, Florida is currently engaged in a fight against the DeSantis administration, which recently issued a formal enforcement letter demanding that city officials remove a rainbow intersection by September 3 or risk losing funding
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.
